The Beginning (originally posted 1/30/09)

Hey yall, I wanted to let you know what's going on with Mom (Donna).

She's really been pretty sick since Christmas, hasn't really been able to eat much at all. We thought she finally got better just after New Year's, because she was feeling better. This week has been pretty hard though.

She's been having severe pain every time she eats, feeling like her stomach is on fire, and its been getting worse instead of better. Her oncologist wanted to do a CT scan on her, but the insurance threw a total fit about it, so they had to do the whole pre-authorization thing. Well, in the meantime, she was getting worse, vomiting every time she ate anything.

So on Wednesday, the oncologist finally told her he couldn't really do anything else, other than put her in the hospital. By this point, she was ready to go to the hospital. So they admitted her.

They have done the CT scan, she has a massive infection in the half of her large intestine that she still has. She is on IV antibiotics (2 kinds) for at least a week, then they will re-evaluate. She may go a second week, or a third week, or a fourth week. The other option is to remove the rest of her large intestine, which she would really like to avoid.

This morning they attempted to do a colonoscopy, but were unable to do so, and had to settle for XRays of the area. So the surgeons and oncologist and GI doctors are consulting to decide if we should move the surgery up on the options list.

Pray for her, that the antibiotics will take care of everything. That she doesn't need surgery. Or that, if she does need the surgery, this will just fix everything. It's been a really stressful week, and month. And I don't live with it every day.

Pray for my dad, he is having a hard time with all this, as would any of us who had a spouse going through all this. I'll keep updating